


My Love is Vengeance

by kalliel



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Dubious Consent, Episode: s06e21 Let It Bleed, F/F, F/M, Handcuffs, Horror, Psychological Horror, Surrealism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-31
Updated: 2011-10-31
Packaged: 2018-04-08 08:59:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4298697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalliel/pseuds/kalliel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes remembering is worse than what you forgot.  (Her breasts puddle like flat discs as she arches backward, and Lisa can count her ribs and know there's nothing inside but myth and Clove smoke.)</p><p>Lisa/Meg, post-6x21 "Let it Bleed." Written for salt_burn_porn 2011.</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Love is Vengeance

_What Lisa thinks about the dream she had last night:_

Innocuous enough.

Some boyfriend, coasting through her life the way they do. Or maybe she's coasting; she doesn't want to stop and think about it. But he's in the kitchen, and gorgonzola was on sale at Kroger's, and she's cutting it.

Backtrack: he's cutting it. Flaying it. He doesn't know what he's doing, and he's fucking up her cheese, but she lets him--only God knows why, but she does.

"You've never had a pear," says Ben. It's like his voice catches on tenterhooks, cracking because he's thirteen and octaves higher with disbelief. This is apparently a Big Thing--the pears.

"Seriously? Pears?"

This is the boyfriend that has seen everything, and done everyone.

(That came out wrong. He's seen everything and done everything. But if he's still anything like she was when they first met, then the former probably still applies. In any case, Ben likes him. That's what matters most now. Maybe.)

This is the boyfriend that has seen everything, and done everything, and suddenly here's the moment Ben never thought he'd have: the opportunity to impress.

"Don't get him started on the figs," says Lisa. And she kisses the Some Boyfriend, who hasn't really shaved, who's been drinking all afternoon again _(why do you do this to yourself)_ , and tells him to put the knife down, to stop fucking up her cheese. Because that's what they have together, or what they don't have. No boundaries. Say anything. Do more.

 

"I really value that about us, you know," she says, when they're sandwiched between sheets, and all the knives are distant reminders beneath pillows.

"All we did was make a pizza."

She can feel all the bones in his body, her spine pressed to his sternum. When he breathes, and when her eyes are closed, he feels like a great big scarecrow in the wind outside. He feels like if she turns around, he'll disappear. He feels like if she stops breathing, she'll knock him off his roost. The myth will come tumbling out. (--And it's possible he's not the only one who's drunk. But it's Friday. It's 1am. She is not the one with problems.)

He breathes in deep and she almost misses the beat. He's still talking about pizza. All this psychology in under three seconds.

"--I mean, with gorgonzola, and pears, and figs, and, uh, stuff."

She smiles. Gentle grind; ass to pelvis, a promise more than an instigation. His hands make rings around her wrists, like he's counting the bones under the skin. 

"Exactly," she says, and doesn't wait for the _what, 'exactly'?_

 

_What Lisa thinks when she has it again:_

"Fuck."

Nine days after the car crash, Ben's still missing school and Barb is doing her sisterly best to sort out the insurance for the hospital. Barb's in real estate, is convinced she's an administrative guru, (is still convinced Lisa is a guru, sans metaphor), is convinced she _knows_ insurance ever since they buried Nona, et cetera, ad nauseam, insert Latin colloquialism here.

Of course, what Lisa's really hoping for is an unlikely _pro bono_. What she gets is a flash of language through her mind, like words being pulled down musical ledgers, A sharp minor, 6/8 time. _Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus, omnis satanica potestas._ What she gets is a phone call, informing her that a neighbor called the police dispatcher. Some awful smell is coming from the Braeden house, like something's rotting.

The police found a Mark Lawrence scattered across three carpets, and his bowel liquids seeping into one.

"Fuck," she says again.

"What's wrong, honey?" asks Barb, even though it is very, very clear what should be wrong. Lisa's been stewing a doctor in her living room and she owes a hospital seven grand. Lisa's pretty sure the quintessential definition of 'wrong' lies somewhere between the two. But Barb takes her hand (and makes a ring around her wrist, like she's counting the bones), and repeats her question.

 _What's wrong, Lis? What could possibly be wrong with_ you?

And Lisa really can't bring herself to say, "I had the pizza dream again."

 

_What the doctors had to say about all this:_

Lesions. Lisa's CT has them--legions of. 

When a body is involved in a traumatic incident, possibly the brain bounces against the skull. Damage occurs.

"Is that what it's supposed to look like?" Lisa asks. She wants to say, _So I'm 'a body'?_ but that turns into _am I a scarecrow?_ before the morphemes even hit her tongue, and what's what started this whole mess.

Well, no, says the doctor. There aren't supposed to be lesions.

"The kind you get from a car crash--is that what they're supposed to look like?"

You should rest, says the doctor. A few more days. Just a few more days.

 

_Lisa's bank statement at the end of the month:_

-$13,555.67

 

_Her last Skype, before she disconnects the Internet (because she's not taking any clients right now, and she keeps finding homepages of the occult in her cache, and she never liked AT &T anyway):_

hey mom  
?

(Barb's Acer has a webcam, but no mic.)

are you oaky?

"Is Auntie Barb taking you to school on time?"

yea cuz she's auntie barb  
_Barb Braeden is typing..._

"Are you doing okay?"

you talk to fast let me fisnih

"I'm selling the house. I know this isn't exactly what we planned--" _I'm selling the house because there's sawed-offs in the closet and I don't know why. There was a dead man in my foyer that my neighbors claim I dated, and I don't know why._

"Sorry," she continues, without waiting for the _what 'exactly'?_. "I know you hate moving."

wait who is taht with u?

 

_The best explanation she can give:_

"I told you not to come here." Lisa watches her laptop pulse sleep, like a thready heartbeat. She doesn't like having the lights on at night because it makes the house seem as empty as it really is; Stanley Steamer even got Mark out of her living room. Sometimes she wishes she could remember to be afraid of the dark.

"I told you not to hang up on my calls. But I guess it's a habit that's hard to break."

She calls herself Meg, and Lisa doesn't call her anything; she calls herself the Queen of Hell, and Lisa doesn't bow. (This doesn't necessarily mean she disbelieves.) There was a time and place when Lisa would have crowned herself, though this was before Ben, and before 'tenure' at the Learning Annex, and before she'd ever, ever thought about baking gorgonzola pear pizza. Or possibly after all of that, except for the pears. These days it's hard to tell.

Meg's stopped guilt-tripping her about Ben and has started in on more of her usual: salt, sulfur, omens.

\--which is exactly why these days, it's hard to tell.

"What do you want from me?"

Meg has replaced the laptop on Lisa's desk. She's sitting, legs splayed, boots dangling, spine bent concave like she's ready to pounce. A snap of her fingers and her Clove flares up like a magnesium scrap. It smells sweet, herbal, pink. The smoke paints Lisa's bedroom a more complicated shade of monochrome. Lisa breathes in, and she feels like she's never wanted anything more in her life. Never

ever.

She feels a boot at the small of her back, hooked around her waist and pulling her closer. Her chair swivels and its wheels squeak. Meg says, "I just want to know who you are, cupcake."

I could smell the demons, Meg claims.  
I can see the Enochian--all the doors, the windows.  
I breathed the yellow sulfur serpentine  
the police never figured out. (It's ours.)

"So who are _you?_ "

 

_Who she isn't (any more):_

"Wanna do something crazy?"

He's lying prone on her floor. This is her old apartment, the one she shared with Xinwei--the business student who grew all the apple pears. The floor is effectively shit, but her mats are good, are new, and he is a shaky, shimmering package of very hot ass. This is the best description she can come up with; she can't be more than twenty. She is childless and mortgage-less and she still hasn't done anything crazy. She's going to be mailed her AA in a couple weeks and she's running out of time for crazy.

 "L--" and he stops, like he can't remember her name.

"Lisa," she supplies.

"I was getting there." He rolls over. "This's the bendiest weekend of my life. And I have spent a _lot_ of weekends in a lot of really weird shit."

"So what's one more?"

 

They're Xinwei's: police-heavy, and cold. Smith & Wesson 100B. The bluing makes the light race frantic across the walls when Lisa pulls them out. They're not really made for this kind of thing, because it's hell on your wrists, but this is what she has. What Xinwei has.

Some One Night Stand breathes out something unutterable. She asks him to repeat that.

"W-whoa, Gumby--I mean, Lisa. That's, wow. That's, uh." Then the swagger is back. "Totally, absolutely bomb."

Because this is an era and a neighborhood where cool people say 'bomb.' So she says, "'Gumby'?"

He scratches his head. He's been twenty-playing-at-twenty-seven this whole time and suddenly he's twelve. "It's nothing, it's-- I couldn't remember your name, so it was a sort of... placeholder, until I could, you know. So my name's--"

 "Tell me after you put these on."

 

When Lisa wakes up, she hates herself. Because now she'll never know.

 

_One night Lisa regrets:_

Breasts, in her palms. In her palms, and naked. Her first instinct: squeeze, feel their weight in her hands. She feels Meg's nipples go hard along her lifelines. Meg's tongue draws a hot, rough noose around her neck and Lisa's head knocks back when Meg's teeth scrape her jawline. Meg is blue white in the midnight monochrome, shadows peeled off like clothing, and clothing like shadows. Lisa has surrendered nothing; she will never surrender anything.

Meg takes her shoulders in hand, presses each finger into the muscle like she's leaving footprints. She feels the grind of Meg's clit in her lap, lethargic and shuddering, like Meg's not quite sure of her anatomy. She's not surprised; their breaths punctuate their every asynchronicity. Lisa thinks of scarecrows. Of roosts.

Suddenly the chair tips backward. She feels herself lurch, like a child on a swing set, and watches Meg fall with her. The fall is ecstasy. The ground is hardwood. Her vision bounces to the back of her head and outward again, marking pointillized rainbows in the blindness of pain. Meg comes down hard, knee to her abdomen. Eruptive pain. A stab wound.

(But Lisa is sure, she has never been stabbed.)

"Stop," Lisa moans, because the pain's convinced her she's about to lose her stomach, her spleen, her something.

"No power in the world can stop me, cupcake."

Meg's hair trails in waves down Lisa's front, like insects marching. First pain, whitefire at her tailbone now, rips through her nerves. It bleeds to nothing. There's a sharp tug at her hips and her jeans peel downward. Meg nips low, low, and her cat-tongue trails down the seams of her leg and her vulva. Lips wielded like razors and too-eager teeth. Lisa can't shake the feeling that she's being eaten alive.

Somewhere high above them, in the relative comfort of Auntie Barb's town home, Ben Braeden is waiting for his mother to wish him goodnight.

 

"We used to be able to talk."

"Lis, I--"

"Ben's waiting for me."

"I wish I could, but I can't. This is the job, and I can't bring this--"

"You've brought it; you just won't admit it."

"I'm sorry."

"That's not what I want from you."

"Lisa, I can't."

"Ben's waiting for me."

 

"Give me your hands."

She and Meg are scissored against each other, and her ass and her elbows are alive with bruises as the rock against each other on the hardwood. Meg doesn't give, but she finds them anyway. She makes rings around Meg's wrists. Thumb and index. Bends outward until the muscles shake and Meg pulls back.

"Thinking hard?" Meg coos, venomous derision unaltered.

She's thinking hard. She's thinking about Ben. She doesn't even recognize herself. Her skeleton is circuit boards and copper wiring. She can dream about gorgonzola pizza all she wants. Speak around her son. Believe in Hell, and the Queen of Hell. There's still something missing, it will always be missing, and Meg and strip her down and crack her open at the core and she will never uncover that essential piece. And the mystery will kill her.

"I'm a prisoner," says Lisa, for the same reasons she did not say anything about the pizza dream. It doesn't matter, anyway. It's not so much a realization as it is a placeholder.

"You all are," says Meg. She twists out of the scissor and plants a saw-like kiss on Lisa's mouth. She misses lips, goes straight to gums.

 

_One she doesn't:_

Same verse, sloppy seconds. Thirds. Fifths.

"Give me your hands," says Lisa, and this time Meg does. She likes this part.

The cuffs are still Xinwei's. 

The bed is still Lisa's.

The wrists are still Meg's.

"No power in the world can stop me," Meg says of the steel. Of Lisa's foolishness.

"Good," says Lisa. "Because that's what I think, too."

Lisa Braeden has an arsenal under her bed. She has rifles in her closet. She has a wooden crucifix dissolving in a gallon of murky water. She has red paint in the shape of a pentagram tagged onto her bed frame. She has a thousand things she will not remember and yet cannot forget.

She watches Meg's face flatten out as the blood drains from it, and her mouth paints fury in less complicated shades of monochrome. If Lisa closes her eyes she can hear the grind of bone and gristle as Meg strains against her bindings. Her breasts puddle like flat discs as she arches backward, and Lisa can count her ribs and know there's nothing inside but myth and Clove smoke. The cords in her neck distend and her brow furrows. It's like her body is a thousand different memories of people Lisa's fucked before, in a mismatched jumble that never quite fits.

"Show me something crazy." _Show me something I've never seen before._

Meg screams in a language heaven's never heard, and in some other life, Lisa understands her. "I remember the smoke," say Lisa, suddenly. "I remember the demon, Crowley."

Meg's eyes are slits and her mouth is a ribbon, dribbling words masked so thickly by the hiss of her exhalations Lisa almost doesn't comprehend her English. "And what does that get you?"

Nothing. One thing: 

No boundaries. 

 

(None that anyone can see.)

Lisa slinks in close, kneads Meg's splayed white thighs with her knees. She cuts her teeth across Meg's neck as her hands slide down, tease bra hooks. She can smell the smoke in Meg's hair.

 

_A lie she tells:_

hey dude, are you ready to come home? I think you'd be better off here than with your auntie barbs meatloaf ;-)

 

_A lie she doesn't:_

thank god love you  
hey are monsters real? auntie barb says you dated one lol  
she called him dean  
feel like id remembr taht one

 

_What she dreams, the night she graduates from gorgonzola pizza:_

"Sometimes I feel like--" says Some Boyfriend. And this is a drunken kind of feeling, numb and nauseous and utterly familiar in its defamiliarization. "It's like--"

Lisa holds out her hands for neither of them to see. It's too dark. She can see her laptop pulsing sleep on the desk, and she can feel his stale breath over her shoulder as it tickles down the scoop of her collarbone; these are the only things to show they're real. "Like you're trapping me. Like you're a weight on my hands."

He says something then, something wholly and inimitably him, but this detail has fallen to the war grounds with his name, with his face. There are so many details like that. _We are called Legion; for we are many._

"No," her mouth responds, to the quip she does not remember. "We've had this conversation before. You usually blackout. You don't remember it. You don't remember any of this."

"Oh."

"Yeah."

"Do we fuck first?"

No boundaries: Say anything. Do more. "Sometimes."

"Is it any good?"

"Not really."

"Oh."

"Yeah."

"Sorry."

"I know; and you never let me forget it."

"Don' want you to forget."

The blood drains from her hands, and they do get heavier. She tries to remember handcuffs.

 

"I won't."


End file.
